5k - My First Race

I was in my very first "race" today. I put that in quotes because it was a 5k and I walked the first mile and slow jogged the last two. I also got a late start since I was waiting on my little. I volunteer with Big Brothers Big Sisters and my "little" and I sometimes find it hard to keep in touch. So I had hoped she was coming since she said she was, but we never got to confirm details, so once the race started we were standing there with our lovely sign waiting just in case my little or another person's little who was also MIA showed up. These kids are juniors in high school, so don't worry folks, I'm not waiting on a third grader to get themselves to the upper west side. It was a beautiful day, about 70 degrees and the race was along the water in a park so it was nice to get out and enjoy it. We all warmed up before the race. Mass calisthenics sure do look funny. Afterwards they had a lovely picnic for us and it was also part of Nickelodean's Day of Play so they had the slime truck out. Haha they played games to determine the winner, and the winner got to go sit on a seat to be slimed. Those kids acted like it was their life long dream to have that stuff ooze all over them. One girl in particular was extra excited and when the slime poured down on her it really drenched her. She didn't look quite as excited afterwards as she did before. I walked around the city some more afterwards because it was such a beautiful day, but unfortunately I couldn't find anyone available to hang out with so I headed home. On the way I saw one of the many street vendors with an exceptionally large pile of bananas. Usually they're 4 or 3 for a dollar so he must have gotten a particularly large shipment of bananas in. I can't wait until Scott comes back. The house is really just too empty, and I end up watching way too much tv. Haha the Nickelodean people announced their "Day of Play" as a day where kids get out and turn off the TV for 3 hours. I guess they didn't want their ratings to slump. Oh yeah, the girl in this picture is someone from my "little's" school. She was nice, and we were jogging partners. This is us at the finish line. I finished in just under 50 minutes. Not bad for walking the first mile, not having exercised in months and starting 10 minutes late.

Worst CrossWord Puzzle Ever

Hello. I like this blog thing. It makes me think of other people all day. I walk around trying to see or find something that is interesting enough to write about. It really makes me notice things, or at least appreciate them. When you live in New York City you start to take things for granted, or well you take things for granted anywhere, but the things you're taking for granted are kind of remarkable. Some bad, some better. For instance I take it for granted that every restaurant I eat in has roaches, if I see one scurry across the table in the middle of a bite I don't yell and demand a refund I just shrug and shift away. I do draw the line when I find a little friend at the bottom of my rice carton. Then I stop eating at that restaurant. Yes, that really happened once, and that restaurant is now closed down. Anyway, all this week I've been weaving in and out of police barriers and secret service type men. It's because the UN is in session and all the foreign dignitaries are in town. Since I work across the street from the St. Regis many men in suits with earpieces stare at me as I walk past, and big black vehicles with signs like "Malaysia PM" are parked along the street. I like to covertly observe all the security dudes as I walk past and see how many I can spot, then I kind of get self conscious and worry that they see me seeing them and they're going to take me down for casing the joint.
And now for the picture portion of the blog. I was thinking of all of you today when I couldn't finish my crossword puzzle on the train. I know some of you are excellent puzzlers (by the way I've met someone who makes them as a profession.) and so you will be just as outraged as I was/am when I got to 5 across and realized that the stupid free newspaper can't even get the crossword right, let alone report any news. Now there are two free newspapers that I can get in the morning. One is "Metro" and the other is "AM New York" they're the caliber of papers that regularly sell their front page as advertising. I used to choose one or the other based on which front page story I found more interesting. Then one day I was doing the crossword in Metro and there was a blatant misprint in the puzzle, so I became an ardent AMNYer. But today just leaves me completely at a loss. Not one of the ACROSS clues matched up to the puzzle. Sigh, but the ones I managed to fill in before I gave up the puzzle for lost made me think of you guys. Dali- Hannah just got back from Dali's house in France. Oman- plus its clue, Sarah and I are going to Oman and Yemen some time. Wok- Scott wants a Wok. Ok that's a stretch but anyway, I just wanted everyone to know I think about them all the time. And I took pictures of the puzzle which includes most everyone else who reads the blog because of photography connections. Hah! I win.

Spackle

In our relationship Scott often cooks and cleans while I change tires or teach him how to do handy things. One of those talents is spackling. If you've ever spackled you'll know that it's really not that tough, so Scott caught on pretty quickly. Our place has needed some spackle for awhile since when our TV and couch came up the stairs they took a little of the freshly painted stairwell wall with them. Oh man, so now we have to paint. I'm really hoping that the leftover paint in the basement covers the spots perfectly and we don't end up painting the entire hallway. It's a good thing I had Scott doing his manly chores today, he's going to be in Massachusetts for the rest of the week. I'll miss him, but I get to take a Massachusetts trip the second week of October and I'm super excited to go see cranberry bogs and Salem at Haloween time.

Volley Bug

It's the start of volleyball season and we played our first regular season game. It doesn't look like we're headed for the championship just yet, but you never know, we may gain some momentum as the season goes on. Scott came and spectated and walked me home. He's our biggest fan. When we got home there was a very large Praying Mantis on the door. Probably almost as big as my hand. I used to love bugs like these when I was a kid. Though in New Mexico they didn't grow nearly as large. I see bugs like this that make me think of my high school biology mandatory bug collection. If I'd had an East Coast relative I could have scored extra points for extra big bugs. Instead our freezer was just full of little bugs. Haha I wasn't the best at killing them though, I wouldn't do the cotton ball with alcohol because they always got stuck to the cotton. I'd just stick them in the freezer. Once I caught a bumble bee and put it in the freezer. When I took it out again it came back to life! Who knew hibernation worked so well?

Trivia for the day: Honey was early man's first sweetener and it was so valued that it could be used to pay taxes in some cultures. (But honeybees don't hibernate, they just stick close together for warmth.)

Lovely Ladies

The first lovely lady of the night was one I met on the train. She and I struck up a conversation so I was entertained on my trip into the city. She was a funny girl from Washington DC headed into the city for a fall party. She said her flowy top and brown pants were what she wore to look like a leaf. After that I met up with Anna and two other girls who were visiting from London. The four of us made quite the group, and we were excited to join the bachelorette party at a place called Lips. The Londoners said that in the UK bachelorette parties are called Hen Parties and the Bachelor party is called a Stag party and that guys go around using their hands/fingers to create antlers and making stag noises, whatever they are. So we got to Lips and were greeted by a lovely "lady" who let us look around for our party. We were already half an hour late so we were surprised not to see anyone there. Finally we figured out whose name the reservation was under and found out that they had cancelled it. We couldn't get ahold of anyone who we were supposed to meet up with so we decided to stay for the show anyway. The Londoners said they didn't have drag shows in their country so we showed them a good time. There were four other bachelorette parties there and when we introduced ourselves we got to say that we were supposed to be a fifth but got stood up. The show was enjoyable with the men/women singing and dancing for us. Afterwards one woman came around and made us balloon handcuffs and toys,she filled the baloons from her bra and one of the brides got a strip show right in front of our table. It was quite entertaining. We met up with Sky and another ASU friend who was visiting with her mom and we all went to Sushi Samba. In the UK I guess the thing is that there are a lot of Salsa clubs so people really know how to dance. Sushi Samba is more of a restaurant but they had a DJ there and the music was great so we decided we'd turn it into more of a dancing place. At one point I felt like I was in a scene from a movie when one of the English girls started dancing with a guy from some other table. They really knew how to dance! I bet they could have been on dancing with the stars! The whole restaurant just watched them spin and dance in amazement. All the waitstaff just came over to watch and clap along. It was a very nice time. I left and came back at one point to see my friends all staring at someone's camera and caught them in the act with my camera. Then the people sitting across from us were giving us an entertaining make-out show and I happened to capture our group watching them. It was a great night out despite being stood up.

Catching Up

I can't believe September is going by so quickly. I try to do at least 14 posts a month and I don't think I'll make it this month, but I can try to at least do a few more before the month is up. For those who haven't seen me lately I did chop off a good 5 inches of hair if not more. It was a somewhat traumatic experience, not because having short hair bothers me, but because when I was sitting in the chair, the lady said oh it just looks crooked but it's really not because blah blah blah, so for some reason I accepted that. Then as I walked out past a mirror I saw a chunk of hair that was very obviously longer than the other side, so I went back up to the front desk where the lady who cut my hair was sitting and showed her. She said "oh yeah, lean over" and proceeded to come towards me with some regular orange handled scissors. The desk attendant who was also there, kindly offered to go get her actual hair cuttting scissors. So she used good scissors but still just cut it leaning across the desk. After that I was done and didn't really feel like arguing, so although I'm happy with the short hair, I think I will go somewhere else next time and get a better cut. Sadly that means spending 80 instead of 50 dollars ugh. I like short hair, but it's so expensive to keep up.
I also got my first graphic design gig. Not that I was actively seeking one, but one did happen to come my way. I made a logo for the Society for NeuroEconomics. I designed one, and everyone was happy then we found someone else with one that was too similar so we decided to change. I'm not sure I'm completely satisfied with it, but it turned out ok in the end.
We went out for happy hour last night, but I took it easy since I'll be going to a bachelorette party tonight. I did learn though that I shouldn't drink Coffee instead of alcohol. It's really not my thing because the caffeine is something I'm not used to so I couldn't get to sleep until 4 am. At least I know it will work if I ever want to stay up.

Random Trivia for the Day: It is illegal to hunt camels in the state of Arizona.

Tap Tap Thump

Tap Tap Thump, Tap Tap Thump... What's that you ask? Why it's the three legged monster otherwise known as Scott. Sure last anyone saw him he had only two legs, but these days he walks with a cane. It's like that riddle,(What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon and three legs in the evening?) only Scott has managed to get to the sunset too soon. Apparently the rough and tumble streets of New York can really get to you if you're not careful. Especially those crazy planters where the sidewalk ends and dirt begins so that trees can grow. Those dips and holes will just reach out and grab your ankle if you're not careful. I would use a lot of words to describe Scott, but careful isn't one of them. So it's no surprise really that he twisted and possibly broke his ankle. He had it X-Rayed this morning and they said there's a bone fragment floating around in there, but it could be from a previous injury. (Like I said careful he's not.) Anyway, now I have a gimpy boy who walks around with a cane. The people on the street give him kind of funny looks, like he's playing a joke on them. Why would a healthy looking young man walk so slowly with a cane? Hopefully he gets better soon, because NYC is not a friendly place for partially abled people.
I always wondered what happened to someone when they break their leg in the city. Everyone uses the subway, which have an escalator if you're lucky a broken escalator if you're not and every blue moon there's an elevator around. Those stairs aren't short either. Then of course you have to get from the subway to wherever you're going which is usually at least a block away if not quite a bit more. If you try to drive, parking is still going to be a pretty good walk away from wherever you're headed. I guess you can try taking a cab, but paying $10 every time you want to go a few blocks can certainly add up. We have a 15 minute walk up the hill just to get to our train. At his current rate of speed that will be an hour long walk, and then he's got a 10 minute walk on the other end. I want to help him out, but I do remember one time a few years ago when he tried to hop on my back to have me carry him, needless to say I crumpled to the ground. I don't think I'll be able to help much except to be his servant while he's on the couch. He tells me he's a fast healer, so I guess we'll just have to count on that.
Your trivia for the day is that when we blush, our stomach lining goes red too.

6 Photographers, 2 Cameras, and 3 Deer

Last Sunday Scott and I went for a nice 5 mile hike at South Mountain New Jersey. We happened upon a Civil War Monument, where apparently Washington used to survey the land. I'm not sure what he saw from there back then, maybe he was really just enjoying the view. Here is Scott showing us how it's done. We were supposed to see three waterfalls, but only one had any water. It was nice, though when we finally got there about 3.5 or 4 miles later we came upon groups of people who had just walked down the stairs next to the falls from their cars. I felt like that was cheating. The next waterfall I hike to is going to be way out in the wilderness where everyone will have to hike at least as much as I did to get there. I picked up the pictures today that were from a film SLR camera that our friend Eric gave me. Eric is the tall 6'7" gentleman who was at our wedding for those of you who might want to put a face with the name. He's also shown in this picture, though he looks different now since this picture is from at least 3 years ago. There are definitely good and bad things about film. For one, there's the excitement of developing a long lost roll of film and finding treasures from the past like this one, from when Scott still had that silly face piercing. But thank goodness for digital, since I get to share these all instantly with you through the magic of a photo CD. It's funny that Eric handed me his camera and the pictures that happened to be in it included him and Scott, nicely appropriate. Eric is living in Germany now, Hello Eric if you read this! I think you're not supposed to let film get quite so old since some of these pictures are a little grainy, then again it could have been the operator, who knows. The only picture that came out really clear was one that Sarah took. It's a classic. The boy in the picture is Wilson, hahaha sorry Sarah. Wilson is actually the dog. The MAN in the picture is Mike. Mike is an acquaintance of Sarah's through Match.com, thus all the sarcasm and poking fun. If that didn't come through when you read the last few sentences, it was there, I promise.
Anyway, in a last bit of interesting picture news, which I don't talk about nearly often enough given my blog title, check out this site if you're ever bored - http://play.blogger.com/ . It plays through pictures that are being uploaded to blogger. It's a fun way to blog stalk and see a random assortment of pictures. It's fun to see the world through everyone else's eyes.
P.S. The title references how many photographers and cameras were involved in the pictures above, as well as the 3 deer we saw on our hike. I felt like the chipmunks and squirrels weren't title worthy.

Monkey no More

Last Saturday we went climbing at a rock gym, well maybe not me, but Scott, Kenway and Brian all went climbing and I watched. Then afterwards we went to some random all you can eat Indian Buffet. As we were finishing our meal the phone rang and it was someone from Scott's lab calling to say that his monkey wasn't doing too well. For those of you who don't know, Scott works with 2 monkies in his lab. It turned out that the monkey had some kind of stroke and was so debilitated by it that it had to be put down. Definitely a sad day. That night I babysat for a super cute 11 month old boy. He was only awake for 1 of the 4 hours I was there. I think that's what made him so cute. Since Sky and Anna are out of town they graciously offered us their apartment for the week and we stayed in the city. Sunday we woke up late and went out for a very nice brunch. It's the thing to do in Manhattan. There are a ton of little trendy brunch places, but it's tough to do very often since well Manhattan prices are what they are. We saw a few interesting but random sights, such as a very empty store front with a humongous and gorgeous flower display in an old bucket, there was another very similar looking one off to the side, but the flowers were all dead in that one. I had no polarizing capabilities so the glare off the window really obscures the picture, but I tried to capture it for you. The other random sight was an old car with some cones on top. It just looked kind of funny. Finally, for all you who aren't in NYC, I took an obligatory 9/11 at the World Trade Center picture since I go through there on my commute fairly often. I'll catch up some more later.

Denver Day 2, 3 and 4

Last Sunday morning Sarah and I awoke bright and early to go meet Mike aka Match.com man for a hike in Denver's lovely mountains. When we got to the appointed parking lot and found it completely full because that's what every other person does on Labor Day weekend in Denver we decided to try going a littl further. We ended up parking near the Buffalo. For those of you who haven't been to Denver, they have a herd of Bison hanging out by the highway. I forget the point of them, perhaps it's a preserve or some such thing. I just remember always seeing them as a kid and they're still there now, so if they're there to make Buffalo burgers they haven't all been eaten yet. So we consolodated cars and hopped in with Mike and Wilson (Mike's West Highland Terrier) and went up Mt. Macy.. Marcy? Some mountain with an M I think. We parked and headed up a trail, only to find that it was just the one that went around the lake. I think we were trying for a more strenuous hike, so we decided to blaze our own trail. With the combination of our concern for Wilson's hiking ability and my guilt at going off the trail after having seen a large billboard admonishing me to "Stay on the Trail." We didn't hike for very long before turning around. The sights were quite lovely of course, the usual mountain scenery. I was trying out a new camera that wasn't digital so you can't all enjoy them just yet. I'll probably develop them and get digital copies made so if they're good you can see them later. Back down the mountain we went and considered stopping for Pizza as planned, but we all ate some power bars before our not so strenous hike and weren't very hungry, so we just headed home. I forget what we did then, Sarah did we go shopping? I think we bought some peaches I'm not sure what else but eventually invited Mike over for some non-existent stakes poker and a Dairy Queen run.
Monday, Sarah had to do her fantasy football draft picks so she showed me around her office and did that while I looked online for a hair salon. Since I couldn't find a place willing to cut my hair we went over to Taste of Colorado and sampled the wares of different booths. The way it works is you buy tickets and then you can redeem them for a "taste" or a full portion depending on how many tickets you want to spend. I tried some pasta and barbeque and corn on the cob. There were also a lot of freebie things that Sarah and I tried out. After we watched an icecream eating contest we got some free icecream and topped it off with a fruit kabob and some kettle korn for dessert. It was a very hot day, and we both got a little sunburned but I was alright with that since seeing the sun feels like a novelty these days. We walked back to Sarah's car and tried to find a salon again with no luck so we went home and made peach cobbler.
Tuesday morning we headed for the airport at the crack of dawn and saw the sun rise over the Denver airport. I still think that place looks more like a group of teepees than the mountains it's trying to imitate. Not much happened on the way home. The bus took forever and it took me nearly as long to go 10 miles as it did to go 1000 miles, but what can you do?

p.s. I wrote this yesterday, but waited to post it since Picassa was being weird and I didn't want to have to upload each picture individually. Picassa is still being strange so I'm just posting it minus a few pictures.

Denver Day 1.

A direct flight can be a wonderful thing. Except when some small child is pounding the back of your seat so insistently and so hard that the person sitting two seats over from you turns around and has to tell them to stop. I didn't say anything myself because of what preceded the kicking. When I got on the plane I heard the flight attendants whispering about where to move some people and how to shift them, so when two teen girls and their mom walked up and saw that one of their seats was gone, I knew there'd be trouble. The teen girls just said, hey no problem we'll just take the three across the aisle and we can all sit together. The mom said, no way. I am getting the seat that I selected. So she complained to the stewardess and the explanation she got was that the family of four doesn't speak English and they were individually spread throughout the plane so they wanted to put them together, especially since they had two small children. The woman wouldn't let it go though, she had an aisle seat, but it wasn't THAT aisle seat. She got to the point where she stood up in the aisle and argued about it. So they moved her away from her daughters to some other aisle seat. 2 hours into the flight the attendant comes up to the family with two small children and says that they have to move. The woman hasn't stopped complaining about how she needs her seat back. So the poor family gets up and moves, and I never saw the complaining lady come up to sit in her rightful seat. It did end the kicking though :) I arrived in Denver and Sarah came to pick me up so we could grab an early lunch at a tasty Mexican food place. Thankfully Denver has green chile, a food you can't get on the east coast. There were even green chile stands all over the place with fresh New Mexico green chile being roasted. Next to the green chile stand were some sunglasessssez stands. I think they never quite spelled it like that, but they did spell it at least three different ways. That night Sarah and I went out for Margaritas and sat out on the patio just people watching. It was pretty entertaining when some person reached toward the top of the fountain and suddenly was knocking off an entire level with the top bowl falling over and pouring into the lap of whoever was sitting next to the fountain. We called it an early night since the next day we had plans to get up and go hiking.

Keep on Moving

I know it's been awhile, but the last week has been a little busy. On Thursday I coordinated a trip to the Liberty Science Center It is here in New Jersey near Scott and I, but we went for work because they just recently upgraded their space. Since we're in the process of doing the same thing we decided to see how their project went. It was a fantastic place with over 200,000 square feet of science based exhibits. You could spend an entire day there and still not see everything. Then I tried to rush back to the office since I was coordinating a surprise joint wedding shower for a couple of my coworkers and I still had a to get the cake and make the centerpieces. That was thwarted by a driver who was totally lost and showed up half an hour after the other car. Oh well, I managed to buy flowers and make a centerpiece and get everything together just in time. I did learn that flower arranging isn't nearly as easy as it looks, and I was quite proud of the outcome, but glad I decided not to do my own wedding flowers. That afternoon Scott and I told our friend Kevin, who lives in Brooklyn, that we'd help him move, so I got home as fast as I could and found another friend Eric pulled up to our house unloading some items. At first I thought some new person was moving into the neighborhood when I saw the U-Haul, then I recognised Eric and vaguely recalled Scott saying something about him staying with us at the end of the month. So we got some of his stuff loaded into the house and got the U-haul turned around on our dead end street and he went on his way to go help his sister move. Eric stayed with us over the weekend since he had a little time between moving out of his place and moving to Germany! Anyway, Scott showed up and we got Kevin moved to his new place which wasn't too far from his old one. My little car has now moved two mattress sets. It was a good thing I had a short Friday, since I was pretty tired from Thursday. My boss let me go early so I grabbed some lunch with Scott and the folks from his lab. We had some tasty burgers and checked out the bathrooms. Not because the food was bad, because they were interesting. You went upstairs and there was no door, it was just a wall of stalls with clear glass doors so you could see the toilets. The only difference between male and female rooms was the color of light inside. When you step inside and lock the door, the clear glass turns opaque and you can pee in privacy. A nifty little trick. That night I packed up and got ready to head to Denver to see Sarah! I'll tell all of my Denver adventures in the next post. For now I've got to go say hello to my man.